Besides my “In Season” series that I’ve been showing you as they’re completed, I have nine new patterns that premiered at Salt Lake City’s Spring International Quilt Market 2011. I love them all, but my favorite is this gem:
As you can see it’s called “Santa’s Pockets” and it’s an advent calendar/Christmas countdown. You can purchase yours here. When my kids and nieces & nephew (9 total) were small I made them each an advent calendar with 24 pockets. I started with a pattern that I purchased and added my own pockets to accommodate a Hershey’s Kiss. The day after Thanksgiving those advent calendars still come out and during my black Friday shopping I buy the bags of Christmas Hershey’s Kisses. Since they were quite small when I made them, that was quite a special treat to eat chocolate BEFORE breakfast each morning. It was a treat for me too as a stay-at-home-mom because it occupied their attention several times throughout the day for almost a month! Waiting for Christmas as a youngster is a hard thing to do without driving mom crazy! Even though they are all three teenagers now, they still fill the pockets & eat the Kisses each morning.
With that said, I’ve been wanting to create “The” Christmas countdown/advent calendar complete with numbers so we could keep track of how many days are left until Christmas. I think I did it. What do you think???
I had a real lightbulb moment last winter when I finally figured out how I was going to make the numbers on the pockets. I discovered I could trace the numbers that I created in just the right scale for the pockets that would accommodate gift cards, Hershey’s Kisses or notes. After tracing, I stitched them on my old Bernina sewing machine with Sulky 12 wt. thread. That’s right and you can too. No embroidery machine required. Another day I will show you just how I did that.
I’m thinking when our local shops get their “Countdown to Christmas” yardage I’m going to have to buy enough to make each of my kids one, this one’s mine!!!
Until next time,
Susan
Quilting my way through life! 